The Bok Decade: A Chronology

This is a highly subjective and definitely incomplete chronology of the Bok years at Harvard. Culled primarily from back issues of The Crimson, it represents an overview, not a summary of the first decade of Harvard's 25th president.

1971

September 1--University Health Services begin offering walk-in gynecological treatment for women.

September 20--Ernest R. May, dean of the College, Theodore R. Sizer, dean of the School of Education, and John Peterson Elder, dean of GSAS, submit their resignations, as Derek C. Bok begins his first academic year as president. He announces the creation of two new associate deans of the Faculty, one concerned with graduate education, the other concerned with undergraduate education.

September 28--President Nixon signs a draft bill which makes men in the class of '75--that year's incoming freshmen--the first undergraduates since World War II to be subject to military induction.

1972

January 28--Three Harvard lawyers help anti-Vietnam War activist Daniel Berrigan win parole after his conviction for burning draft cards.

February 9--The Great Term Paper Scandal erupts, when 40 term papers are stolen from professors' offices over intercession and sold to a New York term-paper-selling firm.

February 24--Black students hold a "mill-in" at University Hall to urge President Bok to divest Harvard's holding in Gulf Oil, which they say "facilitates the daily slaughter of Africans" by its investments in the former Portuguese colony of Angola.

March 7--Richard J. Hermstein, professor of Psychology, on the defensive for his beliefs that I.Q.s vary significantly among racial groups, flees a crowd of 20 people who followed him from a morning class.

March 16--President Bok approves a new housing plan which--for the first time--puts freshman women in the Yard and upperclass men at the Radcliffe Quad.

March 26--Black students, still protesting Harvard investments in Gulf, place 500 black crosses in the Yard, between University and Mass Hills.

April 18--To protest the Vietnam war, 150 protestors ransack the Center for International Studies, causing $25,000 in damage.

April 20--President Bok announces the decision not to sell Harvard stock in Gulf, prompting Black activists to occupy Mass Hall. With the freshmen who live there relocated to a nearby hotel, the 33 demonstrators occupy the building for seven days before ending their protest.

April 30--During a national anti-war strike. Harvard attendance falls to 25 per cent of normal levels.

May 15--Matina Horner, assistant professor of clinical psychology and best known for her work on the status of women, is named to succeed Mary I. Bunting. She is Radcliffe's youngest president.

October 5--Stephen B. Farber '63, special assistant to President Bok, releases his report on Angola after a lengthy visit there, but makes no recommendation on whether Harvard should sell its 70,000 shares of Gulf Oil.

November 7--Richard Nixon wins re-election by a landslide; Sen. George S. McGovern (D.S.D.) carries Massachusetts.

November 13--Alfred F. Pickering '74 collapses and dies in Economics 1350 from an apparent heart attack, as University Health Services arrives too late to help him.

November 28--Samuel L. Popkin, assistant professor of Government, is released after being jailed for five days in the Pentagon Papers case. Daniel Steiner '54, general counsel to the University, played what sources called a "highly significant" role in negotiations to free Popkin.

1973

January 11--John T. Dunlop, dean of the Faculty, announces that he will resign at the end of the term to become director of the Cost of Living Council under President Nixon. Bok announces a search for a successor will begin soon.

January 16--In a meeting of the Board of Overseers. President Bok calls for general curriculum changes in the College.

January 24--The Crimson celebrates its 100th anniversary. Patrick R. Sorrento, shop foreman receives a standing ovation at a banquet.

February 5--The Government Department votes to stop reserving a professorship for national security adviser Henry A. Kissinger '50.

February 6--President Bok names Franklin L. Ford, McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History, acting dean of the Faculty. He had held the post from 1962 to 1969.

February 13--The Faculty votes to continue the controversial Committee on Rights and Responsibilities (CRR) in its current form.

March 18--The Graduate Student and Teaching Fellow Union launches a strike to protest the newly instituted Kraus plan for financial aid to students in GSAS. During the strike's first day, class attendance drops 30 per cent. Midway through the strike, which lasts ten days. President Bok announces he does not plan to recognize the union or take action to end the strike. On March 21, the union ends the strike because of insufficient support.

April 20--President Bok announces that new House masters will be limited to terms of five years, ending the open-ended appointments that had previously existed.

May 1--President Bok names economic historian Henry Rosovsky, Taussig Research Professor of Economics, to be the permanent dean of the Faculty, starting July 1. The appointment ends a three-month search.

May 14--George Putnam '49 is named by the Corporation to succeed George F. Bennett '33 as treasurer of the University.

May 18--Archibald Cox '34 is named special Watergate prosecutor by the Justice Department's Attorney General-designate Elliot L. Richardson '41.

May 23--The University submits what it hopes will be its final affirmative action plan to the federal government, replete with goals and timetables. In July, however, the government rejects the Harvard plan, citing improper goals.

October 20--Archibald Cox, Williston Professor of Law is fired as Watergate special prosecutor in President Nixon's "Saturday Night Massacre."

November 9--The federal government finally accepts Harvard's affirmative action plan, ending a three-year $250,000 effort by the University to meet federal requirements for non-discriminatory hiring program. Within several weeks, though, the federal Equal Opportunity Commission announces it will begin investigating allegations of sex discrimination in hiring practices.

December 1--The Faculty extends Christmas vacation for a week and cancels a scheduled five-day intercession to conserve heat.

December 6--The Committee on Houses and Undergraduate Life (CHUL) abolishes the use of master's choice, class rank, and concentration and secondary school as qualifications for House assignments.

1974

February 14--In his annual report to the overseers, President Bok expresses concern for the health of graduate-level education in the face of financial cutbacks and a tight job market.

March 8--The Faculty of Medicine votes to criminate its innovative Core Curriculum in favor of a more traditional course format.

March 11--About 400 demonstrators chant "hail to the chief" outside of the Harvard Club as Vice President Gerald Ford accepts the Harvard Young Republican's man-of-the-year award. In his acceptance address to the Club, Ford says he is convinced of President Nixon's innocence in the Watergate affair.

May 20--The Economics Department rejects a recommendation of a review committee to include Marxian analysis of socio-economic problems in the Department's graduate program. Less than a week later, the Graduate Economics club votes unanimously to condemn the rejection.

August 9--President Nixon resigns.

September 28--In a speech at the 13th annual kick-off of the Harvard College Fund drive, President Bok cites rising expenses, the proposed Harvard-Radcliffe merger, and the quality of undergraduate education as the major problems facing the University.

October 2--Dean Rosovsky dissolves the Afro-American faculty search committee. Citing the committee's inability to find any new members, Rosovsky says that a "new approach" is needed.

October 7--Fifty students prevent the Adams House Film Society from showing D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation," saying that they object to the film's treatment of the Ku Klux Klan.

November 11--The Rev. Peter J. Gomes becomes the first Black minister in Memorial Church.

November 12--Harvard ran a $1 million deficit and the market value of its endowment declined from $1.35 to $1.19 billion in the past fiscal year, the Board of Overseers financial report says.

1975

January 17--Harvard announces the establishment of a joint Harvard-Iran commission to formulate plans for a proposed graduate level university in Iran. It is never built.

February 7--The Kennedy Library Corporation announces it will not buld the museum portion of its $27 million memorial in Cambridge, after fierce community opposition to the project,

September 15--Dunkin Donurs is barred from opening in Harvard Square because a Cambridge law restricts the growth of fast food restaurants.

September 24--Sen. Frank Church (D-Idaho) discloses that Harvard was one of several institutions whose mail was illegally opened under a 20-year mail surveillance program conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency.

September 25--Giogio Napolitano, head of the culture section of the Italian communist party--who had been invited by the Government Department to lecture at the Center for European Studies--is denied a visa by the State Department on the grounds that he represents a danger to the national interest.

October 3--Two thieves walk off with a $10,000 Oriental rug from the Adams House Junior Common Room in the middle of the afternoon. Two students saw the incident but do not realize it was a theft. The stolen rug is recovered on October 9, though the thieves had cut it into two pieces, apparently thinking they could sell it more easily in small pieces.

October 14--The City of Cambridge announces plans to file suit against Harvard for the cost of repairs to the Kirkland St. underpass, built by Harvard. City officials say the tunnel was built with improperly installed water seals, and that the present project, fixing water leaks, cost Cambridge $200,000.

October 21--A study by David C. McClelland, professor of Psychology, shows that the fear of success increases among Radcliffe women from freshman to senoior year, but declines among Harvard men.

October 23--The price war between Gnomon Copy and Copy Cat Educational Services flares in the Square, with Gnomon picketers distributing fliers saying that Copy Cat, located in J. August, is copying far below cost to drive the competition out of business.

November 6--The State Secretary of Environmental Affairs rejects the final environmental impact report on MATEP.

November 22--Harvard captures the Ivy football championship for the first time ever by crunching Yale, 10-7.

November 24--The Kennedy Library Corporation rejects the University's last bid to keep the John F. Kennedy '40 archives in Harvard Square and voted to place the entire complex on the Columbia Point campus of the University of Massachusetts.

December 9--F. Skiddy von Stade Jr. '38, dean of freshman and master of Mather House, resigns after 30 years in the Harvard administration.

1976

January 14--Dunlop resigns as secretary of Labor and returns to Harvard.

January 16--The NLRB rules in favor of Harvard, setting back District 65's efforts to form a union of clerical workers in the Medical School area.

February 2--Daniel P. Moynihan, professor of Government, announces his resignation as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and said he will return to Harvard in a week.

February 12--All but ten of Harvard's male, only prizes and fellowships are now open to undergraduate women after the Corporation decides that women will now be enrolled in Harvard College.

February 18--Dining Hall worker Sherman Holcombe is suspended for overcooking cauliflower, setting off worker and student protests in his defense.

March 3--Henry Jackson (D-Wash.) wins the Massachusetts Democratic presidential primary; President Ford wins the Republican race.